‘I promised my mom I wasn’t going to die’

The Bounty sank last October off the coast of North Carolina, killing two people. The hearing into the sinking continues today. (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS)

UPDATED 8:21 p.m. Tuesday

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Joshua Scornavacchi got caught up in the rigging and sucked under the roiling waves as the Bounty sank in the Atlantic Ocean, but he had made his family a promise — and he was going to keep it.

“I promised my mom and little brother I wasn’t going to die,” Scornavacchi testified Tuesday at the U.S. Coast Guard hearing into the sinking of the tall ship last October.

He made that promise after his mother told him she had a bad dream. As they prepared to leave New London, Conn., on Oct. 26, Scornavacchi’s mother called her son and told him there were warnings of a so-called superstorm expected to be so severe it had been dubbed Frankenstorm.

In an effort to allay her fears, “I sent texts to my friends to pray, just in case,” Scornavacchi said.

“My mom made me promise not to die. That bothered me later.”

It also made Scornavacchi, then 25, fight for his life.

As he pushed to free himself from the lines, he was losing muscle control as well as air. But then he thought of his promise and got “really upset.”

“When I got to the surface and you look out, you just see behind you this ship that’s trying to suck you in.”

The masts, yards and lines were silhouetted black by the night moon and it was utter chaos, with debris floating everywhere, Scornavacchi said.

“I didn’t think anybody was alive because I didn’t see anybody,” he said.

Then he saw others like him swimming for their lives, his own task made all the more difficult by his oversized immersion suit. He had given his suit to one of the women on board, so he was wearing a larger medium-sized suit.

“My suit was massive on me,” he said.

It filled with water when he hit the ocean, pulling his boots off in the bottom of the suit.

Scornavacchi and some other crew members grabbed a floating life-raft canister and tried to inflate it but failed, their movements hampered by their suits. As they struggled, an inflated life-raft floated by, so they grabbed that and were eventually all able to get inside.

Able seaman Adam Prokosh said he learned of the hurricane just hours before they left port. He said it was “really exciting to think there was a storm brewing.” The crew had experienced smooth sailing in recent months, which he likened to training for “the big game day.”

But the Bounty had just sailed to Connecticut after undergoing repairs at a shipyard in Maine, and Prokosh said he felt the bilge pumping system had difficulty holding its prime on that voyage.

He determined the system was taking nearly twice as long to pump as it had before, and he told both the captain and first mate. He said Capt. Robin Walbridge replied, “Oh, I’ll think about that.”

Prokosh told the hearing he does not believe the captain was brushing him off.

“I believed him, that he was thinking about it,” and that the pumps would be fixed at sea.

But Prokosh, 27, said he did feel they were in a hurry when they set sail for Florida.

“Yes, I did feel like we were rushing, getting the boat packed up on the double.”

And when the storm picked up ferocity, he was smashed into a bulkhead and badly injured. He later learned he suffered a compound fracture, three broken ribs and a separated shoulder.

Prokosh said Claudene Christian spent quite a bit of time trying to make him comfortable and helped him over to the port side of the Bounty to get him out of the water because by then the ship was listing heavily to starboard.

Scornavacchi said he started to worry about the crew’s safety about an hour before they went up onto the top deck to abandon ship. As they gathered supplies below deck, he saw Walbridge go into his cabin.

“He was looking at a picture of his wife.”

He never saw Walbridge again. The 63-year-old was never found and is presumed drowned.

Scornavacchi said Christian was on deck right beside him. The Bounty was listing so badly, they had to brace their feet against the railing to stop themselves from sliding into the water.

He said Christian, 42, crouched down beside him in the aft of the ship.

“She looked at me and smiled,” glanced down, then turned to him again with a “determined look” on her face, he said.

She timed her next move with the ship’s pitch, running over to midship where other crew members were working with the emergency supplies.

Scornavacchi said he looked up at the sky, closed his eyes for a moment, and the Bounty rolled over.

Some crew members slid into the water right away, but Scornavacchi stood up on the fife rail, then jumped into the water, where he got tangled up in the rigging.

Christian and Walbridge were the only two crew members not to survive.

Prokosh said he believes the Oct. 29 sinking will benefit crew members in that they can learn from what happened.

“This experience on the Bounty is going to be picked apart and scrutinized,” and he said he hopes it will result in improved safety for sailors.

“I’m just hoping something comes out of this tragedy in a positive way.”